He took my arm. “I’ll help you. Come on. There’s no excuses in living right.”
I plopped down on the yoga mat. “Do you have a collection of these sayings? You’re like a walking infomercial for pain and bad food.”
I lay down, and he lifted my knees up. He put his hands down hard on my feet and leaned over me so that his face was inches from mine. It was overwhelming having him so close. Against my will, my uterus whirred into action, boosting my system with a megadose of hormones. My body flushed, and not just from the physical exertion. I wasn’t used to having a young, good-looking man in close proximity.
“Okay, Eliza, we’re going to start with normal, old school, run-of-the-mill crunches,” he said. “Nothing fancy.”
“We?We’regoing to start?”
“You know what I mean.”
I thought about arguing with him or feigning a heart attack, but I knew I couldn’t win an argument with him, and a trip to the hospital would just postpone my return to my couch and leftover pizza. Resigned to the torture, I put my hands behind my head and lifted my body upward in a crunch, moving my face even closer to his.
He shook his head, like I was his daughter and I failed the SATs. “Your breath smells like coffee,” he said.
I gnawed at the inside of my cheek and avoided his eyes, which was difficult since we were so close to each other. “Maybe the smell is coming from someone else.”
He sighed, and his breath smelled like eggs and testosterone. I didn’t know what he was doing with me. We were opposite sides of the coolness spectrum. No matter what I did, I could never live up to his expectations. I was doomed to fail.
By the time I was halfway through the third crunch, I started to cry. Hudson arched an eyebrow. “Keep going,” he urged. My tears began to flow, and my nose was running into my mouth. “All right,” Hudson said, resigned. He took my hand and gently helped me up to a sitting position. He sat down next to me and put his arm around me. “Tell me when you’re ready.”
It took me a good five minutes to be ready. I blubbered and wiped my nose on my shirt. “This is never going to work,” I blurted out, finally. “I’m going to stay a dumpy, old woman with rolls under my bra strap. I’m never going to win him back.”
Once the words started flowing, I couldn’t hold them back. While I cried and worried about the impossibility of becoming a new me, Hudson held me tight and didn’t say a word. Finally, I wore myself out, and we sat in silence for a moment.
“It’s going to work,” he said, finally. “You’ve only been doing this for one day. It will work.”
“So, I have to work out forever? You’re going to torture me every day for the rest of my life?”
“I wish I could, Eliza, but I ship out in ten days.”
I turned to face him. He was staring at me with a slight grin on his face. “What’re you talking about?”
“I’m a Marine, remember?”
“But a Marine in San Diego. There are a lot of Marines here.”
“Yes, but they come and go. It’s part of the job.”
“Where are you going?” I asked, my voice hitching. All of a sudden, I was desperately worried about him. Were we still at war? Probably. I didn’t want him to go to war.
“I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you. And I don’t want to kill you.”
I searched his eyes for the humor that usually accompanied the familiar joke, but he was dead serious. He was a man of few words, but he had action written all over him. “Are you some kind of commando beret-wearing guy?” I asked.
“Something like that.”
I barely knew him, but I had already grown attached to him. He had become my support system, and he promised to improve me and give me the happily ever after that I was desperate for. What would I do without him?
“Ten days isn’t enough. I can’t get fixed by then.”
“This isn’t a get-fixed sort of thing,” he explained. “This is about getting you on the right track so that you can live your life.”
“Live my life? Is that your goal in all of this? I was already living my life.”
“No, you weren’t.”
Hudson stood, took my hands, and yanked me up. He rolled up the yoga mat and walked me to his car with his hand on my lower back. Opening the passenger door, he waited for me to get in and closed the door behind me. He tossed the mat in back and settled himself in the driver’s seat. Leaning over me, he opened the glove compartment, taking out the little notebook I had seen the day before. Inside, it was filled with scribbles, scraps of paper, and a few photos. He pulled it close to his chest and flipped through it until he found the page he wanted.
